This article is Part 2 in a five story series about NFTs. Catch up on Part 1 here.
If you’re a person who spends a lot of time on crypto Twitter, you’ve likely already heard that bewitching and illusory term — ‘The Metaverse’.
Another of those emerging technology concepts that takes more than one go at getting your head around, bear with me as I attempt to give an introductory shakedown to this beguiling space and where it intersects with identity.
One of the reasons ‘the Metaverse’ is hard to explain, is because it doesn’t necessarily exist. Except, it does. Everywhere, and also nowhere. And you’re there, and I’m there, right now. But it’s also a place of what will be, and what might be, that is being created as we speak.
Feeling lost? Hold on…
THE ORIGIN OF ‘THE METAVERSE’
It was American writer Neal Stephenson who famously coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, where it referred to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people.
Facebook, arguably one of the companies most invested in the Metaverse, describes it as such:
“The ‘metaverse’ is a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”
Whereas Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Mathew Ball, author of Metaverse Primer, says:
“The Metaverse is an expansive network of persistent, real-time rendered 3D worlds and simulations that support continuity of identity, objects, history, payments, and entitlements, and can be experienced synchronously by an effectively unlimited number of users, each with an individual sense of presence.”
While tech publication Verge describes the Metaverse like this:
“It’s partly a dream for the future of the internet and partly a neat way to encapsulate some current trends in online infrastructure, including the growth of real-time 3D worlds.”
So which is it, exactly?
All of them.
A space where NFTs, Virtual Reality, Gaming, Crypto, and Decentralisation are currently colliding, the ‘Metaverse’ encompasses:
1) the technological meets cultural/social space that is evolving in our global society, and
2) the VR/NFT/crypto integrated world of humanity + advanced technology that we could soon or one day live in.
Think of it like this…
Using an ownership verified Profile Picture NFT as your avatar on Twitter?
Metaverse.
Exploring a Play to Earn NFT Game to earn more NFTs while helping the creators build out the game?
Metaverse.
Playing SecondLife or Fortnite?
Metaverse.
Connecting with your friends in VR to chat instead of over Zoom?
Metaverse.
Collecting NFTs that learn and evolve over time thanks to AI?
Metaverse.
WHERE IS THE METAVERSE?
Arguably, the Metaverse is all around you already and will be ever more so, increasingly.
Every time you step online to check one of your social accounts, you are entering the virtual version of the world — the Metaverse — as it currently is. And you might not think so, but you already have multiple different versions (identities) of yourself that you use in the Metaverse every day.
There is you in your official, legally identified capacity, when you do your internet banking, pay your bills, open a mortgage, apply for a travel visa with your passport.
There is you on Facebook, where you filter what different people can see of you, where you upload photos of the cake you just made, where you wish your Grandma a ‘Happy Birthday’.
There is the work version of you, who projects a professional image and uses industry vernacular, who exists over email, Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, Monday, Notion, Asana, Medium, and the like.
There is the Instagram version of you, where you smile and pose with a drink, where you post inspirational quotes, where you post a photo of you and your dog going for a walk, where you share the latest meme that made you laugh.
WHO AM I IN THE METAVERSE?
Sometimes in the online world, you act exactly the same as you do offline.
But often, these two versions of yourself, or rather, these multiple different versions of yourself, have different versions of your name, more and less formal ways of speaking, different content that they would share and be associated with, and a different avatar that would represent them.
You already live in the Metaverse and maintain many different avatars of your identity there.
What does this have to do with NFTs? Well… Do you know what the term ‘avatar’ really means?
The word likely brings up for you a mental image of your Facebook profile picture, maybe a Sims character you created to look just like you, possibly Jake Sully driving around the body of a giant blue person all using technology and his mind, or perhaps just the character you like to play as in your favourite game…
Those are all very close to the mark, and there are also some deeper, more poignant, almost transcendent connections between this word and the Metaverse we are in/entering/developing that are interesting to consider and may help to bridge the gap between understanding identity and NFTs.
THE ORIGIN OF ‘AVATAR’
The word ‘avatar’ is derived from a Sanskrit word relating to Hinduism meaning ‘incarnate in human form’. Or more specifically, ‘the incarnation of a deity in human or animal form to counteract some particular evil in the world.’
Thinking on the conventionally understood concept of ‘reincarnation’ —an individual living multiple lives by being born again, one life after another, into new and different bodies — human incarnations are human, they are imperfect by nature.
But an ‘avatar’ is mythical, perfect and divine. It represents a particular supreme figure, in the world, for a specific task. There can even be multiple avatars of the same figure present in the world at the same time.
‘Four years ago, I sat down at a computer, clicked a few buttons, filled out a text box or two, and in a few short minutes created something it takes the most accomplished novelists years to produce: a fictional character with a life of its own. The life in question, as rich with possible directions and desires as any Shakespeare protagonist’s, began unfolding within moments.
His name was Alhinud, and he emerged into the verdant, perilous realm of Sosaria a grown man, moderately talented in blacksmithing and magic but with ample room for improvement in these and other skills much prized among the Sosarians.
For the next two years I led him into wildernesses, intrigues, bold commercial enterprises, and other adventures typical of the densely populated social spaces known as ‘massively multiplayer online games’, or ‘MMOs’. And Alhinud, in turn, led me places I had scarcely imagined in the moment I invented him: into realms of obsession and aspiration it seems both absurd and, increasingly nowadays, inevitable to come upon in a computer game.
Alhinud was what we sometimes call an ‘avatar’ — a Sanskrit word originally referring to the visible forms adopted by Hindu gods to represent themselves in this, our lesser, mortal world. Online culture nicked the term to name the digital forms that represent us in virtual worlds, and if it gives us godlike feelings of control to inhabit them, that’s not to say we’re any more immune to the seductions of these worlds than the ancient gods of myth were ever safe from ours.
We fall in love there. We lust for power and for wealth. We seek adventure and escape from the tedium of our more enduring, realer lives.
We say they’re only games, these little worlds, but often we end up devoting more time to them than to any other realm of our existence, until it starts to make less sense to think of our avatars as fictional characters than as second selves…’
- Excerpt from Alter Ego: Avatars by Robbie Cooper
How this connects is….
NFTS = AVATARS = OURSELVES IN THE METAVERSE
Simple enough, right?
We already have multiple avatars, and what Profile Picture NFTs offer is the ability to:
- Display authentic, one of a kind digital art.
- Verifiably own your avatar in the Metaverse so that you are identifiable and distinctly unique.
- Own the full commercial rights to your avatar/s.
- Earn crypto or more NFTs through initiatives like NFT-driven or composable games, or other elements of that project’s economy.
- Gain an elevated social status within the Metaverse by showing you’re either an early adopter or a crypto-savvy member of the ‘in’ crowd.
- Gain access to exclusive communities, content and entertainment.
- Protect us as an ‘anti-sybil measure’ —As it’s harder to make fake accounts/bots when the accounts are represented by costly NFTs.
- Provide greater clout for influencers and individuals who want to be taken seriously within the crypto/NFT/Metaverse and related communities.
For e.g., if an individual with a CryptoPunk avatar retweets about your project, everyone is going to take it as more legitimate commentary than if they did not have that avatar. - Become more than yourself. To present yourself for a specific task as a perfect, mythical or figurative version of who you are, who you would like to be, or the group you do or would like to belong to.
Or, separate your online and digital identities entirely.
PFP NFTS IN THE METAVERSE TODAY
This year has been huge for NFTs but at present, it’s the PFP variety leading the charge.
PFP projects differ from most NFTs in a few key aspects. Importantly, PFP initiatives tend to involve the drop of thousands of NFTs at once, all algorithmically put together using a fixed set of data. In that way, they can be considered part of a larger series, unlike most NFTs, which exist as one-off digital artworks.
PFP NFTs also behave more like traditional collectibles. In combining the excitement of gambling on the stock market with the pleasures of creating a ‘digital personality’, PFP NFTs could redefine how works made in the medium are collected and created.
Because of the way PFP NFTs are created, they are often collected with the same enthusiasm and attachment as one might have for the characters of their favourite cartoon or TV show.
Creator of iconic NFT project Sup Ducks Franky Aguilar had some interesting comments to ArtNews on exactly this phenomenon:
“They associate a personality with that character that reminds them of themselves or how they want to be.”
But what can you currently do with your PFP NFTs? Or any of your NFTs for that matter?
You can buy them, sell them, trade them, store them in a wallet, view them on your device or on a digital screen (like a Samsung ‘The Frame’ TV); you can show them off as your avatar across the social media landscape, earn them in games, mint new randomised NFTs via algorithmically generating functions (like with ‘breeding’ CryptoKitties), or you can choose an NFT and help it to evolve via Altered State Machine.
You can use your NFT to access exclusive content on your project’s Discord channels and secure an invitation to future drops, and you can set them as the avatar for your ENS.
But currently, that’s about it.
The options are currently underdeveloped, but it’s an area ripe for exploration… In fact, there’s one particular next step that makes so much sense, I think you’ll be surprised that no one has thought of it already…
WHAT IF WE COULD ENABLE NFTS TO COMMUNICATE?
WHAT BECOMES POSSIBLE WHEN NFTS CAN COMMUNICATE?
More on this in our next article :)
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Got questions in the mean time? Get in touch with our team now on Twitter or Telegram, we’d love to hear from you!
Or if you’d like a refresher on the basics of NFTs, go back to our 101 guide in this article or catch up on Part 1 of the series here.
from: http://codingsoho.com/zh/blog/identity-and-the-metaverse/
